My phone company just offered for my 768/128 kbps A-DSL connection an upgrade option to 1500/384 kbps for a few Euros more... I'm living on the country, not in a (big) city.This is nice, but can't compete with typical Japanese and Korean internet users who have even higher uploads than my download rate is. Also they're Linux and Java friendly and don't like the Xbox (hark hark)... Will this be the Java market of tomorrow? :-)

Regardless of the numbers that get shouted about, broadband is definatly not the norm here in the Uk, and doesn't look likely to be for at least a couple of years (and even then its going to be pretty narrow).

The setup, costs and hastle just arn't worth it for the avarage person (whether true or not, thats the attitude). Getting Ntl or whoever to actually come round to a house to install the acess points is a long, tedious process. And typically they can only turn up during working hours. Compare that to setting up a modem account where you can just bung in a cd, answer a few questions and be done.